Longtime Avidemux user struggles, has success and struggles again #Playback

[bangarangus]

Issues report first:

• German version: Undo shortcut CMD + Z doesn't work. It has to be CMD +Y (in the English keyboard layout the Z is located where the Germans have the Y). It took me a while to figure it out, but of course i can live with that. So just for your bugs list.

• The (Chromium) player is horrible. I edited a few recorded live streams - 2 tracks, MP4 with AVC video (1080p, variable frame rate, constant bit rate, keyframes every second) and AAC audio, so completely run-of-the-mill. These videos work for a short time. But soon the suggestion to convert to the FFmpeg version pops up. Okay then! But then the preview playback of my cuts isn't smooth anymore - the player often stutters at the cuts. Please note: I'm aware that lossless cutting means by design to cut on keyframes. So all my cuts happen on keyframes - i always navigate by SHIFT + scrollwheel rsp. ALT + left/right arrow. At the end of the day i can only trust my experience, export the whole edit, check it closely and eventually correct a few cuts that went bad. To be repeated... That's really time consuming. And somehow defeats the purpose of this otherwise excellent application.

On your suggestion i made the test: Dropped one of the 'bad' videos onto Google Chrome, moved the playhead a few times to the right and left - video freezes for good. Only way out is to quit Chrome. Brave Browser is a bit better - video gets stuck for a moment, but playback recovers after a few seconds. Safari browser remains unimpressed - i can move the playhead really fast 20 times, playback instantly starts. Avidemux hasn't any problems either.

...................

Longer report:

I'm mentioning my struggles and my Avidemux background because i was missing absolutely crucial information. In the past weeks i had been trying LosslessCut 3, 4 times and always gave up because i couldn't get it to work. Until i found out:

• The timeline in LosslessCut is designed completely differently from what people might be used to in Avidemux or NLEs like Final Cut or DaVinci Resolve. In those i cut a segment out and it's gone (with the timeline getting shorter). In that respect LosslessCut is a completely different animal compared to Avidemux, it adds a layer of non-linear editing. While Avidemux is a strictly linear editor. As long as users are not aware of this feature - i. e. the timeline always maintaining the same duration, by including (for export purposes) both active and inactive segments, thereby always leaving open the option to further edits of any of the segments - the app doesn't make sense.

• The second playback button. Only once you're aware of that button in the bottom right corner (and its use) the app starts getting extremely useful. Now i play (i. e. preview) my string of edited segments seamlessly from the beginning, or from a selected segment (to preview a particular transition). That can be done in a fast way (i. e. without using the zoom feature) after assigning the necessary (intuitive) keyboard commands.

I think adding a prominently placed intro containing these details really would help. Also regarding the negative comments i've seen. Maybe with a stronger emphasis as well on the fact that lossless trimming only makes perfect sense when you cut on keyframes. And only with content that isn't overly complicated. I mean when i have f. ex. a long dancing video, i would usually do the shortening in Final Cut. A much faster approach. Sure, something like that is doable with LosslessCut too, but would take way more trying and testing. And you had to lose some moments because you just couldn't get them in without annoying jumps. Another aspect: content with long GOPs (keyframes in intervals of multiple seconds) is hard to do as well usually.

Finally: LosslessCut has really amazing potential. I hope these bad playback issues with some videos (most of the ones i have tried) will get resolved.

My system: macOS 26.4 (Tahoe), Mac Studio M1 Ultra, LosslessCut 3.68.0

[mifi]

• German version: Undo shortcut CMD + Z doesn't work. It has to be CMD +Y (in the English keyboard layout the Z is located where the Germans have the Y). It took me a while to figure it out, but of course i can live with that. So just for your bugs list.

I think this could be due to a migration issue. You should be able to go into settings of LosslessCut and change the keyboard actions as you like. Does that not work?

On your suggestion i made the test: Dropped one of the 'bad' videos onto Google Chrome, moved the playhead a few times to the right and left - video freezes for good. Only way out is to quit Chrome. Brave Browser is a bit better - video gets stuck for a moment, but playback recovers after a few seconds. Safari browser remains unimpressed - i can move the playhead really fast 20 times, playback instantly starts. Avidemux hasn't any problems either.

thanks for testing in chrome. i agree, the chromium video player has some serious issues (and it has gotten worse over time). But this is not really possible for me to fix, we would have to report issues to the Chromium team.

Thanks for the other feedback, it's valuable. I've created a new issue about this here: #2892